May 20 K-12 news round-up

“At a Denver area elementary school, students are organized into classes in an unconventional manner — they are arranged by what they know, not their age or mandatory grade level.” [CNN, via the Huffington Post]

ABC News reports that Florida high school principal George Kenney has been placed on administrative leave after a student Kenney hypnotized committed suicide.

In a cost-cutting move, the Los Angeles Unified School District is individually interrogating librarians to determine if they actually have a teaching function and hence are eligible for employment protections afforded to educators but not, LAUSD argues, to librarians. [L.A. Times]

“Our public schools are woefully unprepared to deal with the fastest-growing ethnic group in the U.S. Only 17% of Hispanic fourth-graders score proficient or better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress while 42% of non-Hispanic white students do. Nationally, the high school graduation rate for Hispanics is just 64%, and only 7% of incoming college students are Hispanic, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education.” [TIME Magazine]

T.H.E. Journal reports on “six technologies that will change education.” Among these technologies are open resources and cloud computing.